What kind of job can you expect with a master’s degree in marketing, one of the highest-paying master’s degrees? While this advanced degree can help you reach senior-level roles eventually, you may be looking at more entry-level positions when you first graduate with your master’s in marketing. Some examples of these roles are marketing assistant, marketing analyst and marketing coordinator.
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Entry-Level Roles With a Master’s Degree
The term entry-level is relative. What’s considered an entry-level role for someone with a marketing master’s degree is different from entry-level roles in retail, food service, and similar industries. The kind of “entry-level” roles you’re looking for as a master’s in marketing graduate may require at least a bachelor’s degree and expect applicants to have some internship experience at a minimum.
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Certain opportunities may require a master’s degree and a year or two of work experience, although they may still have names that sound entry-level. These opportunities are usually at companies with a more prominent reputation.
Prospective students sometimes wonder whether a master’s in marketing is worth it, since they still start in entry-level roles. Besides qualifying for roles with higher entrance requirements, you are also more likely to move up in your marketing career faster with a master’s degree.
Marketing Assistant
The role with the most entry-level sounding name is marketing assistant. Some of the duties you might perform as a marketing assistant, according to the American Marketing Association, include tracking campaign results, coordinating market research studies, analyzing data on market research and industry trends and preparing reports.
The median salary for entry-level marketing assistants, according to Salary.com, is $43,900. With a master’s degree, though, you’re more likely to work in an intermediate marketing assistant role, such as what Salary.com classifies as marketing assistant II. Despite the similar job titles, professionals who fit into the marketing assistant II category earn thousands of dollars more per year than entry-level marketing assistants, with a median salary upwards of $49,000.
Graduate students can sometimes land a student marketing assistant role assisting their college or business school during their studies, allowing them to gain more experience in the field while networking with established marketers.
Marketing Analyst
An entry-level role that is likely to appeal to you if you don’t mind working with numbers and undertaking research is marketing analyst. Marketing analysts are primarily concerned with the research and data analysis and interpretation aspects of marketing, rather than with creating the ideas for marketing campaigns and content or with coordinating the efforts to pull off those ideas.
As a marketing analyst, you might be more involved in collecting data, including devising the methods used to gather consumer and market data and to assess campaign success. While the marketing assistant may execute some of these plans, marketing analysts have more influence on developing them. For example, a marketing analyst might identify the best way to gather information, such as an online poll or a questionnaire, and create the questions and answer options that make up that tool. The marketing assistant might then administer the questionnaire to the population you selected.
As the job title suggests, marketing analysts are heavily involved in analyzing the data gleaned from these research methods. Part of their job description might include using statistical analysis software to understand, interpret and give context to data.
Again, having a master’s degree typically gives you a pay boost at the marketing analyst level. While the median salary for marketing analyst I was reported as $54,384, Salary.com reported median salaries of $66,718 and $86,320 for marketing analyst II and marketing analyst III, respectively.
When it comes to gauging business performance and sales growth, raw numbers don’t mean much for the purpose of making business decisions. Those numbers need context, such as comparing sales and profits to those of last quarter or last year.
Marketing Coordinator
Marketing coordinator is a more general role than marketing analyst. While there are some areas of overlap, such as conducting market research and assessing and analyzing data pertaining to customer behavior, marketing coordinators also have a broader scope of job duties, according to the American Marketing Association. They play more of a direct role in designing and carrying out marketing campaigns, including collaborating with the designers, copywriters and other creative professionals who bring to life the marketing team’s ideas about the text and visual elements. Marketing coordinators may also be in charge of overseeing and keeping track of marketing campaigns and activities and keeping tabs on competitors.
The median salary for marketing coordinators, according to Salary.com, is $57,098. From a marketing coordinator role, you might advance to a position like marketing communications specialist and, ultimately, to a marketing communication manager role with a six-figure median salary.
Additional Resources
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What Are the Highest-Paying Jobs in Marketing?
What Is the Difference Between a Degree in Marketing and a Degree in Market Research?